I am finally getting back to this, my writer's blog. For some writers, writing is sporadic, and for others it is a regular thing. It used to be a regular thing for me back in the days of yore, but then I became a sporadic writer, though just pre-covid I had a huge writing spurt on my back patio in the sun. Those days were bright and happy. As a writer, I like to edit--I mean something about myself as a writer feels I should. I used to call myself the Queen of Twice--I think and do most things twice, so what it amounts to is that I second guess my sentences. Each thing I think or say, I want to perfect how I thought or said it. To demonstrate how a writer sometimes works, I want to take those last two sentences prior to this one and change them. I fancy perhaps saying, "{...} I had a big writing spurt on my back patio two summers in a row. Those days were bright and sunny." But, of course, if this were an academic article, it would be predominently frowned uon for me to quote myself--but that would apply mostly to if I were quoting another/different of my articles I had written. It would be equally as frowned upon (the repetition here used as a tool for emphasis) to use the words "of course" in an academic article--the academic paper is more formal, and as a formal voice, you cannot be so personal with the reader as to allow yourself to appear to assume he or she would not understand that a given point would be "of course." Of course, writers revise: "{...} be offended as if you would be assuming they would otherwie not know it isd 'of course.'" Such are the tiny nuances of writing that are hard to teach and best learned by the writing student him- or herself. For many people, this is what sours them on the notion of writing. It is what constitutes a really bad time. When I taught writing classes at colleges, about half the students in each class liked the writing assignments anough to dig in, but when it came to editing and proofreading, they groaned and wanted to ignore it, that second second draft. For others, getting anything out on paper is the hardest part, but once it's on paper, the revising/proofing is easier. As you can also see above, you must must must correct your typos (or misspellings); my old eyes often miss these, these days. And it is okay to use "of course" IF it is obvious you are telling yourself "of course" as to refer it is applied only to yourself. So when is it best to use "yourself" intead of "oneself" or vice versa and why? I usually just feel my way through the formality of the statement. It used to be more improper to use "yourself" when writing was more formal. Also, "oneself" can apply more to the individual, and yoruself can be a more generalized term to mean anybody or everybody who is a oneself...The elipses here (the three dots) need not apply, and it would be best to not be used here. I have to add here that a paragrpah that is this long is most always frowned upon in a short essay like this one. So I ask you, where would you install indents for make more paragraphs out of this one? Where is each new point? Well, here's one, below.
These types of nuances occur also in music. Last night, as my husband and I were coming back from Cedar Point, there was a double hit program on the radio. One of the Led Zepplen hits played was "Good Times, Bad Times." A couple of things so genius about Zepplen's Page and Plant (Jimmy and Robert, of course) is the musical layers and composition transitions. I challenge myself as a writer to try to explain such layers and transitions as onlhy Zepplen can so songfully emit to pour forth, here me using repetitious words that create a redundancy so as to technically mean to "pour forth to pour forth." If you want to, you can look ot up in the Thesaurus. But that repetition is part of the sing-songy effect of any song as it can be at times used as a device in one's writing. And trust me, most beginning essays will not be as circular as this one--but will be more A--> B-->C. Nor would a beginning essayist much attempt to explain,as I said, such nuances about writing. Let's move on and get to the song.
(TO BE CONTINUED)